My Name is Red Response

The novel My Name is Red, written by Orhan Pamuk is essentially a crime novel, written in a fragmented narration and spoken by different narrators—some of which are animals, or inanimate objects. What makes this novel extraordinary is its fluid storytelling, even though it is narrated through different (and quite distinct) narrators. The fragmented narration—especially the supernatural aspect of some of them—is a postmodern technique which provides a narration in which we are able to see many motives of characters as well as a fuller picture of the culture.

            One thing that the fragmented narrative does is that it gives voices to people (or animals, or plants, or inanimate objects) that provide a very different view of a certain event or of behaviors of a certain group of people. In My Name is Red, while the majority of the narrations are given by humans, there are quite a few which are not.  For example, the novel begins with a narration from a deceased person, in a chapter titled “I Am a Corpse”.  This first narration lets the reader know immediately that this novel will deal with elements of the supernatural, and will not just stick to the usual narrations.

            However, while each chapter is written from a different perspective, the narrations are very cleverly intertwined in a way that the action does not pause, and we are not separated from the plot.  This is an important aspect of novels that are written from a variety of narrators.

            The use of many different “perspectives” is paired with the art within the novel.  We see many times that the men who created miniatures compare their work to the new perspective style of the Dutch artists. The thing that was said to make the Elegant Effendi truly great was that he had begun to incorporate this style in with his miniatures, or illuminated manuscripts. If we apply this concept to the whole novel, the use of fragmented narrations can be seen as less of a postmodern technique and more of a comment on a changing society. The different perspectives is an introduction to the new Western art form, and perhaps it is also marking an entrance into a more western mode of society. However, another interpretation of this is that it is just an elaborate pun.